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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899316">Run boy run</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Freak_Boy/pseuds/The_Freak_Boy'>The_Freak_Boy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Season/Series 01, i don't know if this is hurt/comfort or not help, no beta we die like ben, way too much use of the word run or running</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:09:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,215</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Freak_Boy/pseuds/The_Freak_Boy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it felt like Five had been running his whole life. Running away, chasing something...</p>
<p>Would it ever end?</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>**Just in case, there are NO spoilers for s2, it's all for season 1 only**</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dolores/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Run boy run</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is set before the end of the first season, and before Five returns Delores to the store.</p>
<p>I'm not a native english speaker, so maybe there are some mistakes :s please tell me if you find any mistake so I'll correct it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Five ran a lot. Sometimes it seemed like he’d been running his whole life.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He ran when he was two years old, when his father forced them to train, to be better. Faster, stronger. To overcome things they shouldn’t even be facing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He ran when he was ten, chasing after criminals with his siblings. He didn’t <em>need</em> to run, and though he liked to show off, sometimes it was fun.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He ran at thirteen, when he ran away from that cold mansion they called home. “I want to time travel” he had said, no, demanded. “No” was the answer, “you are not ready, number five”, his father insisted, and Five had foolishly refused to listen so he got up and ran, and jumped.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One jump and the landscape around him changed, it was all brighter, it was hotter and people were wearing fresh clothes. Another jump and people disappeared and reappeared in other places, he felt the cold of the snowfall almost immediately, but his adrenaline only made him feel warmer and more alive than ever. So he jumped again, convinced that he was more than ready, and the landscape changed again. The snow disappeared, but so did the people, the buildings. The cold world was replaced by a burning heat, everything almost flat around him, buildings completely destroyed to the horizon. The rests around him were burning, and there was no more snow falling from the sky, but ashes that burned his throat and felt acid when breathing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now he was fifty-eight, and he had spent all his life running. Except now he wasn’t running away from something. He wasn’t running away from his siblings trying to catch him, nor his father ranting against them for not catching “the villains”, nor he was running away from his home to prove his father wrong. No, now he was running <em>to</em> something.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He was running home.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d been doing it since he was thirteen, when he tried to jump back in time and never could, but he didn’t give up either. He read every math book he could find, he needed to find the correct equation, and if he couldn’t find any more books, he’d invent his own math, to come back home and stop this madness. The destruction of the entire world…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He was fifty-eight and he’d survived the apocalypse, alone. Surviving to hunger, cold, suffocating heat and the complete loneliness of knowing he was the only living being in this destroyed planet. Well, he had Delores. His beloved Delores…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But she didn’t count. He could pretend all he wanted, but at the end of the day, she was just a mannequin he found under the debris of a mall while looking for clothes to drown the cold.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He was fifty-eight and he had killed people. Innocent people, mostly, who had never committed any crime. A gardener, a school teacher, an apothecary’s son, a kid…</p>
<p>But he had to, he had to get back to his family, he had to warn them about the apocalypse in 2019. Those lives were worth nothing compared to the future of humanity. He never enjoyed killing, but that didn’t meant he couldn’t be the best at his job. And one day, while he was in 1963 about to shoot Kennedy, it hit him. He solved the equation, it wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. The answer to the question he made for more than forty years of his life…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And this time when he tried to time travel again, he made it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He was thirteen again, at least in appearance, and he had finally come home, seventeen years later, to his siblings, but a whole life for him. And as much as he wished to be with them, the world was ending in eight days and he was alone again. He didn’t want to, but he should. He had to protect them. Besides, they wouldn’t believe him, he’d seen Vanya’s look when he told her about the apocalypse, she thought he was mad, that he’d only jumped from 2002 to 2019 and his brain had fried in the process. Why else would he look exactly the same as when he left? How foolish he’d been to think they’d understand, they were too young, too naïve.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Again, it was only him and Delores against the world. Or, well, against its destruction.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The little number five had finally come home, after forty-five years in the isolation of a desolated world, surviving from the trash he could find, like a cockroach, and yet his long race hadn’t finished yet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Because Five kept running. Running to protect.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He might have finally come home, but of what use would it be to him, knowing that in eight days they will all die? And despite all his years there, he never knew what caused it. Only the date. So he must keep running, chasing after his goals: run away from The Commission’s assassins, chasing after the one who would manufacture the prostatic eye whose owner would cause the end of all life on Earth, saving Delores from the claws of his stupid brother. Think, who causes the end of the world? There’s a probability list, he made the equations, they were all scattered through his room’s walls. The gardener, the equations are clear, if he dies it is possible the world doesn’t end. There’s also the old lady, maybe it’s her, maybe it’s all of them. He has to kill them, that could potentially save the world, but then his brother refuses and threatens to throw Delores through the window, and she’s all he has- he has had since he was thirteen, she’s as important as his family. She <strong>is</strong> family, so he puts the shotgun down and accepts not to kill those people and instead, goes back to The Commission. Maybe with an administrative job, instead of being a field agent, he could find more information about who causes the end of the world.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So he runs back home, again, when he finds the name in a paper. Harold Jenkins. Whoever he is, he must die. His brother Diego obtains his police file, and they recognize his face as Vanya’s boyfriend.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They go to rescue her, of course. The man killed his father with a hammer when he was a kid, he’s a psychopath. Except that, when they reach Harold’s house the guy’s already dead, and Five feels so overwhelmed…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It can’t just end like that. It can’t be that easy. Who killed him? Was it Vanya? Klaus said dad had killed himself to get them all together, how did his father knew about the apocalypse? But then Klaus said Five was an addict, that he couldn’t live without the apocalypse and it was better if he just lets it go and accept that it’s finally over. Maybe he was right…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe it was time to stop running and sit down to rest.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe it was time to get a new life. He’d spent his whole life trying to stop the apocalypse, could you blame him for not knowing what to do when he achieved it?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He never stopped to think about what would he do when it was over. Maybe it was time to start doing it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now he could stop running.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Maybe.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Author's note: he didn't stop running. F</p>
<p>ps: I gotta tell this is the first ff I've posted here and basically in my whole life, I'm kida exited but nervious hahahah</p></blockquote></div></div>
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